Yet this was not a ferry boat, but a passenger boat engaged especially for me to carry me to Suifu before nightfall.

The Chinese passengers had courteously projected their companionship upon the inarticulate stranger.

An elderly gentleman, with huge goggles and long nails, whose fingers were stained with opium, was the pacificator of the party, and calmed the frequent wranglings in which the other eighteen Chinese engaged with much earnestness.
Well, this boat--a leaky, heavy, old tub that had to be tracked nearly all the way--carried me the forty miles to Suifu within contract time.
The boatmen on board worked sixteen hours without any rest except at two hasty meals; the frayed towrope never parted at any rapid, and only once did our boat get entangled with any other.

Towards sundown we were abreast of the fine pagoda of Suifu, and a little later were at the landing.

The city is on a high, level shelf of land with high hills behind it.